This season was a roller coaster of ups and downs and even some upside-down loops in there. We joked throughout the year that we could write a book on how crazy this season was. In the end, we finished the ride with a MIAC regular-season championship, which was our first outright title since 2005. I hope to give you an inside look at some of the challenges and some of the triumphs from this season.
Injury Filled Season:
The season started with some crazy injuries. The craziness began when we lost our returning leading scorer to a concussion that happened in our preseason conditioning test. Yes, that is correct, a concussion during a skating test. We then lost two of our freshmen before the start of the season with injuries that took them out the entire first half of the season. We lost one of our players when he was riding his bike home from a workout and his sweatshirt got caught in his wheel and he went over the handlebars. We had a player run his head into a wall while playing soccer before a practice. He ended up with stitches and we had to find a way to get his head into a helmet again. To put it all in perspective, at one point we had 5 players in casts at the same time. We also had two players have surgeries within the season, of which both recovered and played. It was easily the craziest season I have ever experienced in regard to injuries.
Boston Trip:
The team was able to make a trip to Boston through some very generous donations from alumni. It was a great experience for the guys, but that’s not to say that trip didn’t have some ups and downs as well. First of all, every player made the flight and we landed in Boston with no issues. We then went to get our rental vans and a U-Haul to transport our gear. We didn’t know the challenge this would bring from driving two huge vans and a U-Haul through downtown Boston. First, we got the U-Haul and on the way back from the rental place, the driver (not going to name anyone) accidentally drove it into a parking garage at the airport and wedged it into the ceiling, ripping off a corner of the back end. Let me repeat that… We ripped the top of a U-Haul off! We managed to get all our stuff to the hotel and then had a plan to make our way to a Boston Bruins game. We loaded into two 15-passenger vans and headed into downtown. Of course, the GPS turned off and we got lost when heading into the tunnels in downtown Boston. 45 minutes later, we dropped the guys off at the front door of TD Garden. Nice for those guys, but then the next challenge was to find parking. That was not fun at all. It was a little stressful driving two large vans that we rented through crazy traffic in downtown! On a positive note, we had some great times the rest of the trip, which were highlighted by winning our second game against Nichols College. The final highlight was our student manager getting to meet, and get a picture with, Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers. The trip was amazing, but so was landing back in Minnesota and being done with it.
Tale of Two Seasons:
We started the year 3-6-4 and 1-1-3 in the MIAC. This had us at the bottom of the MIAC standings and with a real hill to climb going into the second half of the season. In the second half of the season, we were 9-2-1 and 8-2-1 in the MIAC. The two halves combined to give us a 12-8-5 overall record and a 9-3-4 MIAC record. The second half of the year brought us from the bottom of the MIAC standings to the MIAC regular-season championship! I really don’t know what it is about the first half of the season to the second half with SJU hockey this year and in the past, but we really seem to play better the second half of the year. This is really something we are going to focus on moving into next year.
MIAC Awards:
This season 8 Johnnies received MIAC hockey awards. SJU landed six student-athletes on the 20-man All-MIAC first team: senior forwards Brady Heppner and Kyle Wagner, senior goaltender Andrew Lindgren, junior defenseman Jake Dittel, and freshman forwards Jack Johnson and Auggie Moore. Johnson and Moore were joined on the six-man MIAC All-Rookie team by freshman defenseman Peter Tabor. Junior defenseman Travis Brown was named All-MIAC honorable mention and senior defenseman Adam Orn was named to the MIAC All-Sportsmanship team. The SJU Hockey team had the most players on the MIAC first team and the MIAC All-Rookie team. Finally, thanks to all the work of the players and staff, I was able to represent SJU as the MIAC Coach of the Year.
As you can see, this year was quite the roller coaster of emotions. The guys really came together throughout the year, and we were playing good hockey at the end of the year. We never made things easy on ourselves and that was evident right to the end. We were down 4-1 halfway through the last game of the year against Saint Mary’s and managed to come back to win 6-5 and earn the MIAC regular-season championship. Nothing came easy this year right to the end, but I believe we became stronger for it. This strength and experience will help us moving into the start of next season.
The next blog will be about our 4 graduating seniors and their plans for the future.
As always, thanks for following Johnnie Hockey and stay safe in these crazy times.
Go Johnnies!
